


Love's Not Time's Fool P.II Ch.5

by kinfic2



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 12:51:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2468834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinfic2/pseuds/kinfic2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"These are the times that try men's souls." T.Paine<br/>One year post 513</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love's Not Time's Fool P.II Ch.5

                                                                  

  
_                                                              “It was a Monday, a day like any other day. I was inside looking outside. _  
_                                                               I’m looking out for the two of us. I hope we’ll be here when we’re through with us.” _ _ ©Gramm/Jones _

He stood across the street, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Separated from humanity by an invisible glass wall of thought, he was in the world but scarcely aware of it. With his attention focused on the coffee shop, his surroundings retreated into a background of white noise. So non-descript, the building usually went unnoticed. Except by the locals. They knew better than to judge a meal by its store front, preferring the intimate anonymity of their neighborhood haunt.

                                                                                                   
  
Confident the physical distance would give him a mental safety net to sort out his jumbled thoughts—it didn’t help that he was hung over—he lit up with a steady hand and drew the smoke into his lungs. He slitted his eyes against the sun and searched the grime-streaked windows. Despite the glint, he spotted him easily; dealing with his body’s reaction wasn’t as easy. Blindsided by an unexpected surge of emotion, the jolt momentarily spun him out of control and for once, not because of his libido. It was a flight-or-fight response to the threat of fucking up so badly, he would never see Justin again.  
  
Ignoring the random shoulder bumps of impatient New Yorkers, he battled his demons with rapid puffs on his cigarette. Had he been in Pittsburgh, those who knew him best would have exchanged furtive glances. The staccato inhales meant one thing—Brian Kinney was anxious.  
  
Grim-faced, he sucked in a final drag, flicked the butt in the gutter and stepped off the curb. He hesitated, ostensibly to grind the ember with his heel, but couldn’t convince himself that was the real reason. As cars whizzed by like racers toward a checkered flag, he took a deep breath and zig-zagged through breaks in the traffic.

                                                                            

                                                                                                          * * *                                                                                                       

With the morning rush over and the hour too early for the lunch crowd, few customers remained. In stark contrast to the city chaos outside, they lingered over newspapers or laptops in an eerie quiet broken only by the clang of pots and the clatter of dishes from the kitchen. Chipped Formica countertops and worn vinyl seats continued the hole-in-the-wall feel, as did the obligatory but unnecessary chalkboard sign with the special of the day. One whiff of simmering pot roast and bubbling apple pie told the story better than words ever could.

                                                                                            
  
Sliding into a tattered red booth, he nodded toward the mammoth breakfast. “I see you started without me.”  
  
“I was hungry.” Mumbled through bulging cheeks, the words were barely intelligible as bacon and eggs disappeared at an alarming rate.

“Don’t you ever eat, or are you squirreling away for a harsh winter the rest of us don’t know about?”

                                                                                               
  
A forkful of hash browns poised in mid-air, Justin looked up from his plate in surprise. “What? This is healthy. And breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”  
  
_This coming from a twink who made Twinkies a food group._ But a wisecrack about portion control died in his throat. Distracted by a smidgeon of egg clinging to a plump upper lip, he willed his traitorous hand not to brush it away. “Um, you left a piece.” He pointed to his own mouth. “Right here.”  
  
Justin swiped at the food with a napkin. “Thanks.”  
  
“This your substitute diner?”  
  
“Never thought of it that way, but yeah, I suppose it is. The food’s great and it’s nice going to a place—”  
  
“That reminds you of home?”  
  
“I guess, but I only come here on off hours. The place is a madhouse otherwise.”  
  
“Really?” He shifted in his seat and surveyed the almost empty restaurant.  
  
“This isn’t an official meal time,” Justin reminded.  
  
“Ah, right.”The condescension coated his tongue with acidity, but before he could lob a zinger of his own, a petite bleached blonde approached him with a pad and pencil. “Just coffee.”  
  
“Decaf or regular?”  
  
“Decaf? People actually drink that shit?”  
  
“I don’t get it, either. I mean, why bother, right? Anything else?”  
  
“That’s it.”  
  
“Why am I not surprised?” She eyed him up and down. “Don’t tell me. You eat lettuce leaves, carrots, and never touch carbs.”  
  
Justin lowered his head with a choked snort and clapped a hand over his mouth.  
  
“You okay, hon?” She thumped him between the shoulder blades.  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine, Barb. I swallowed too fast.”  
  
“Need a refill?”    
  
“That’d be great. Thanks.”  
  
“Be right back.” True to her word, she returned with a steaming pot and earthenware mug,poured their coffee, and dropped a menu on the table. “Give me a holler if you want anything else.” She sashayed to the counter and chatted with a grey-haired man in a pinstripe suit and a twentyish hipster in jeans.  
  
Brian tilted his head in her direction. “You have your own Debbie to look after you, too.”  
  
“It’s my irresistible, boyish charm.”  
  
“And your modesty, of course.”  
  
“Nope. You have a monopoly on that.”  
  
“Sarcasm duly noted.”  
  
Justin took a slow sip of orange juice and put the glass down with deliberate care. He reached for a napkin, dabbing the corners of his mouth in a pretentious display of decorum. “For the annals of queer history, you asked me at the gallery if I slept enough and now you’ve questioned my food intake.” He placed the napkin under his glass, adjusting the edges in perfect alignment. “Be careful, Mr. Kinney.” A narrow flash of blue underscored the warning. “People might get the impression you care.”    
  
The snark stiffened the hair on his neck. _S_ o we’re going for the jugular right off the bat. He laced his comment with the same amount of vinegar. “We couldn’t have that, could we?”  
  
“No, we couldn’t. Not only do you have a reputation to protect, Liberty Avenue couldn’t survive another battle of the queers crisis.”  
  
He raised his cup in a mock salute. “Not bad.”  
  
“It’s an acquired skill.” Justin tore off a piece of toast and popped it into his mouth, licking the butter that dripped down his hand. “But I had a good teacher.”  
  
“Knew you’d get there eventually.”  
  
“Necessity is the mother of invention, the survival of the fittest or—”  
  
“I get it,” he snapped. “Spare me your freakish knowledge of encyclopedic cliches.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
The indifference grated on his already frayed nerves. “Why the fuck did you agree to this? To blame me?”   
  
Chewing reflectively, Justin made an elaborate show of looking around. “I don’t see anyone else who fits the bill.”  
  
“Is that why you wanted to punch me in McSorley’s?”  
  
“McSorley’s was a visual and vocal observation on your lamentable attitude.”  
  
He slammed his cup down with a decisive thud, sloshing liquid on the table. “I won’t fucking apologize for not getting on my knees and begging you not to go to New York.”  
  
“I don’t believe I’ve asked you to apologize.” Justin calmly wiped up the spill. “In fact, I don’t believe I’ve asked a damn thing of you. Want to know why?” He crumpled the napkin in his hand. “I never had a chance! You never gave me one.”  
  
“If the reason you’re here is to unleash a year’s worth of misdirected anger, you’d better take a number. I only have one ball left.”  
  
“Misdirected? You think my anger is fucking misdirected? Are you that stupid? Or egotistical? Or both?” The paper wad bounced off the table and landed on the floor. “I know it’s been a while, a very long while, and I’m probably missing half the subtleties and nuances of Kinneyspeak, but are you saying, in your usual convoluted way, that I should direct my anger at myself?”  
  
He raised a ‘if the shoe fits’ brow and drained the last of his coffee. When a refill appeared, he gave an absent nod of thanks, grateful for the interruption. This moment would decide who won and who lost.  
  
Justin straightened his spine against the back of the booth, shoved his plate aside and folded his hands on the table. “Tell you what. Let’s play a game. I ask questions and you give answers.”

With a ‘how about you go screw yourself’ expression, he refused to retreat. Although the man across from him had never been a creampuff, he detected a new confidence and didn’t know whether to be proud or terrified.  
  
“Why did you let me leave?”  
  
“I told you, New York—”  
  
An impatient hand waved in the air. “Not New York. Before the bombing at Babylon. I could ask about the other times, but let’s focus on that particular moment in our illustrious past. You pride yourself on how well you know me—not that way, asshole—and you were so fucking sure I wanted what Michael and Ben had.”  
  
“Didn’t you?”  
  
“At the beginning, yes. At the end, no. I just needed us to be on the same fucking page! Why the fuck didn’t you stop me? Other than a few monosyllabic words before I left, did you bother to talk, to try and work things out? No! Because it would have made it real, made _us_ real. And if that happened, you would have had to look at your own actions, at your own accountability for your part in us. And you couldn’t do that. So you let me go. Like always. Then you could lie to yourself that you did it for me. Fuck! I didn’t want to go! I’ve never wanted to go!”  
  
“But you did. _Like always_.” The matter-of-fact statement, calm and without malice, unconsciously flung open a window into his own wounded heart. “And to ‘focus on that particular moment in our illustrious past,’ you did it very efficiently, too. When I got home, you were packed and ready to leave. Your mind was fucking made up before I walked in the door. Nothing short of a declaration of love and a promise of monogamy would have satisfied you. Who’s rewriting history now, Sunshine?”  
  
Justin blanched. “Would the love part have been so bad?”  
  
Without hesitation, he gave a decisive one word answer. “Yes.” But seeing him shrink in pain from the bluntness kicked him in the gut. “Not because I wouldn’t have meant it. Because your fantasized version of us would have automatically leaped to the other and that wasn’t going to happen then.”  
  
After staring into space for an inordinate amount of time, Justin picked up his fork and rolled it back and forth between his thumb and index finger. “You always said I have to live my own life, make my own choices.”  
  
“You do.”  
  
“Then let me make them! Stop trying to influence the outcome! You know what that tells me? That you don’t trust my decisions and you think I’m someone you have to take care of.”  
  
“Bullshit! Are you still insinuating I’m some kind of control freak?”  
  
“I’m not insinuating. I’m stating a fact.”  
  
“The junior psychologist! Taking night classes in your spare time?”  
  
“You can’t make people do what you say or feel what you want them to feel, Brian.”  
  
Pushed over the edge by fright rather than anger, blood pounded in his ears. “And you don’t get to fucking analyze me!”  
  
The defiant outburst, the set jaw, and troubled eyes confirmed what Justin surmised. This was not the I-don’t-give-a-shit man of a few years ago. This was a man fighting the past, struggling with the present, and trying to reconcile both with a yet-to-be-determined future. As was he. “From day one, you’ve beaten me over the head—” He caught the movement. So fleeting, he wasn’t sure, but in the millisecond needed to process, his brain confirmed the flinch. As profound as his own trauma, there was no way he could miss it. Stricken with an uninvited rush of compassion, he wanted to take him in his arms and weep.  
  
He rushed to rephrase. “Bad analogy. Scratch that. From day one, you wanted me to think you were a terrible person. So did your ‘friends,’ who never ever missed a chance to reinforce that idiocy.” Awakened from a benign blue, his eyes shot out rays of gunmetal. “ ‘I don’t believe in love. I believe in fucking.’ ‘I don’t want you here, you little shit.’ ‘Brian doesn’t do boyfriends.’ ‘Brian’s a selfish prick who thinks of no one but himself.’ No regrets, blah, blah, blah. I know the party line by heart.”  
  
When Brian started to speak, he stopped him with words wrapped in razor wire. “You’re so full of shit, I’m surprised you can walk. You wanted me to believe your crap so I wouldn’t love you. You tried to make yourself into an ogre so I’d pull away, and because you’re a twisted son-of-a-bitch, feel good about it! Well, I have a newsflash. It didn’t work. If you want to prove how awful you are, you have to do a hell of a lot better. Because for an emotionally stunted, controlling narcissist, you do too many unselfish, altruistic things.” He deflated like a punctured balloon and sagged in his seat.  
  
They eyed each other in charged silence, waiting, but not sure what for. Until a faintly skeptical smile and softly uttered comment broke the impasse. “You have your rose-colored glasses on again.”  
  
“Then help me take them off,” he said, unfazed. “Once and for all.”  
  
_“And I’ve got no illusions about you. Guess what? I never did._  
_When I said, ‘I’ll take it,’ I meant ‘as is.’”_ _©A. Difranco_

                                                                                                 * * * 

A wide range of emotions skirted across the pale face. And Brian caught every one. “What makes you think this time would be different? We fucked it up more than once, if you remember,” he pointed out.

                                                                                               

“No shit. I was there, _if you_ _remember._ ”  
  
“We can’t change everything that happened.”  
  
Justin countered the negative headshake with one of his own. “No, but we can change where we’re going. It’s the end result that counts. It’s not as difficult as you’re making it out to be.”  
  
“And it’s not as easy as you’re making it out to be.”  
  
“I didn’t say it would be easy. But it’s not an insurmountable and unattainable goal, either.”  
  
“Should I sing a chorus of ‘Climb Every Mountain?’” There it was, the instinctive fallback. Joke your way out of an uncomfortable situation.  
  
“Fuck you! I guess it depends what you want and how badly you want it.”  
  
“What the fuck do _you_ want?”  
  
“I don't know!” Justin ran a hand through his hair in aggravation. “I know what I want to want, but I don’t know if wanting what I want to want is realistic.”  
  
“Deep thoughts by Justin Taylor.” Maybe his pathetic attempt at humor could dissolve their sudden cloud.  
  
“Hey, you asked. I answered.”  
  
“True. You did,” he agreed, relieved to see the suspicion of a grin. “Now, could you translate for me?”  
  
“Very funny. Christ, why do I feel we keep rehashing the same subject over and over? I thought we’d be past this by now.”  
  
He understood the frustration. They’d traveled this road before in their volatile tinderbox of highs and lows and each journey wound up at a dead end. “You want something new? How about this? You have every right to be mad. So you can tell me to leave or go to hell. Whatever you want.”  
  
“Is that what you want?”  
  
“I’d quote you but I’d have to understand what you said first.” His voice lost its teasing lilt. Time to get back to business. “Look, if you want to start again, fine. If you want to end it”—he tapped down his rising bile—“that’s fine, too. It’s your choice. It always has been. But just so you know, you and Gus are the two best things that ever happened to me.” Why the fuck did he blurt that out?  
  
Justin huffed out a deep breath. “So the word of the day is fine? Okay, fine! I choose you. All of you. Not just the parts you let me see or want me to see.” He leaned forward to emphasize what he was about to say. “But like I said in McSorleys, either we start over and try to have a relationship as equals or I’m out of your life. And I swear this time it will be forever.”  
  
The finality and hurt squeezed his stomach. A steel door slamming shut. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?”  
  
“No, I’m laying to rest any misguided ideas your misguided brain has about what I want from you, from us, despite your mental subterfuge. For whatever reason, we have a chance to get it right this time, but I need to know you’re with me one hundred percent.”  
  
A shudder rumbled from his core to his skin like a shockwave, as if Justin had located each crack of uncertainty. With tentacles of an empty future tightening their grasp, the watershed moment sent him reeling. “You’re gonna have to work with me on this.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                    
  
**“Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything. And everything belongs to oblivion...or to him.”** Jorge Luis Borges  


**Continue here** : <http://archiveofourown.org/works/4222830>


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